Wendy Lustbader, M.S.W., has considerable experience working with older people, their families and caregivers. A medical social worker who specialized for almost twenty years in out-patient mental health at the Pike Market Medical Clinic in Seattle, she has also practiced in a home health care agency, hospital geriatric unit and nursing home. She is currently Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work and lectures nationally on subjects related to aging. Wendy’s first book was co-authored with Nancy Hooyman, Taking Care of Aging Family Members. This is a practical guide to caregiving which is still considered the best book of its kind by experts in the field of aging. Her second book, Counting on Kindness, helps readers to comprehend the complex and often unspeakable feelings which arise when we become dependent on others for help. It is often used in the training of social workers, nurses, and physicians, and is regarded as a classic for health care providers. Her third book, What’s Worth Knowing, is a collection of pithy insights gathered from older people that has been used by ministers in sermons and managers wishing to liven up staff meetings. Her latest book, Life Gets Better: The Unexpected Pleasures of Growing Older, opposes the stereotype of aging as dimishment.

Entries by Wendy Lustbader

One of the chief cruelties of depression is how it encloses us in a dark tunnel, a space that doesn't extend beyond the borders of ourselves, our thwarted desires and hopes, stifling loss and bitterness. The light of compassion for others doesn't reach us in there, yet that is precisely...

Your 90-year-old mother insists on remaining "independent" in her own apartment. She needs you to take her to the doctor, to arrange for extra help following medical procedures, to fill in when there is any kind of gap in her ability to keep afloat with daily life tasks. Sometimes you...

Childhood lasts a thousand years; the rest of life passes in a blink of time by comparison. Thus, an adaptation made to our particular circumstances long ago may live on in adulthood as cringing around conflict, a habit of self-reliance, barriers against intimacy, set ways of doing things or any...

A spouse unexpectedly walks into a room where her partner's email-in-progress is lit up on the screen. In a blink, a work email replaces the previous one. Why the abrupt switch? What is being hidden? The Internet is making it possible for many to find long-lost loves, relationships discarded in...

It is true that email from beloved friends can be printed out and given the heft of paper. I have done this. I then place each email in a file folder labeled with the friend's name. But I prefer my shabby boxes filled with 30 years' worth of letters from...

All parents feel vulnerable to their children. Between the longed-for praise -- "You did a great job, Mom" -- and the dreaded guilty verdict -- "You were a lousy mother" -- lies an almost limitless area of doubt and self-recrimination. The more regretful parents feel, the more watchful they are...

Inside all of us is a great pool of grief that keeps enlarging as each fresh loss is added to the others. This is why we often find ourselves weeping for earlier losses along with a present heartache. Sometimes even a sad scene in a movie will get me into...

I like to be where I am. If I walked around with a cell phone or a web-connected device, I could be taken away from who or what is around me at any moment. Especially if I am walking with a beloved person in the woods near my home, I...

Pretending to be happy is a terrible burden. When we're not feeling cheerful, trying to get into the so-called holiday spirit can be exhausting. Straining to keep up with the banter, laughing at the jokes, attending to people's stories, and maintaining the overall pretense tends to deplete the spirit rather...

No one beyond their youth wants to be in their twenties again. "I'll take the body, but I wouldn't want the life," a 66-year-old woman assured me. These are the most difficult years of all. We have to figure out who to love, how to love and what we should...

When an older family member needs help, many people struggle to find the time to provide assistance to their relative amidst the many other commitments crowding their lives. Often, it is hard to figure out just how much help is really necessary. Some caregivers try to give too much time...

1. Our confidence grows. Youth is a time of searching and insecurity, trying to figure out how to live, and as time passes we gather more and more certainty about our own aims and preferences. We become less interested in comparing ourselves to others, having slowly gained an internal compass.

Two veils separate us from the divine -- health and security. -Sufi saying

I once asked a particularly warm-hearted oncologist how he could stand to have so many of his patients die, yet remain so open in his relationships. He revealed that every year he goes into remote areas...